Accra is full of things that are broken and reported by nobody, because everybody assumes somebody else has done it or that reporting achieves nothing.
Reporting does work, unevenly. What decides the outcome is almost never how angry the report is. It is whether it reached the body that owns the asset, whether it said exactly where, and whether anybody followed it up.
This guide is mostly about the first of those.
The one thing to get right: who owns it
The single most common reason a complaint dies is that it went to the wrong office. A pothole on the Spintex Road and a pothole on your lane are the responsibility of two different agencies, and neither will forward your message to the other.
| What is broken | Who owns it |
|---|---|
| Street lights | Your district assembly. ECG supplies the power, but the lamps, poles and maintenance are the assembly’s |
| Potholes on a major road | Department of Urban Roads, under the Ministry of Roads and Highways |
| Potholes on a trunk road or motorway | Ghana Highway Authority |
| Potholes on a residential or feeder road | Your district assembly, or the Department of Feeder Roads |
| Traffic lights | Department of Urban Roads |
| Road markings and signage | Department of Urban Roads, with the National Road Safety Authority on policy |
| Burst mains, no water, leaking pipes | Ghana Water Company |
| Sewage and public toilets | Your district assembly |
| Blocked or open drains | Your district assembly; large storm drains involve Hydrological Services |
| Fallen power lines, broken poles, meters | ECG |
| Uncollected rubbish | Your district assembly and its waste contractor |
| Illegal, unsafe or abandoned billboards | Your district assembly’s outdoor advertising unit |
| Damaged bus stops and lorry stations | Your district assembly |
| Building on a watercourse or without permit | Your district assembly’s physical planning unit |
Notice how often the answer is your district assembly. It is the default, and most people do not know which one they live in.
What a report has to contain
A report that says “the street light on my road is not working” cannot be acted on. One that a technician can drive to can.
- A GhanaPostGPS digital address. This is the difference between a report that gets fixed and one that gets filed. Open the app, stand at the thing, copy the code. It takes ten seconds and gives an exact point. — Getting a digital address
- A photograph, and a second one from further back showing a landmark or a road sign
- The nearest identifiable landmark — “opposite the Shell station at Dzorwulu junction”, not “near my house”
- What is wrong, in one sentence, without adjectives
- How long it has been like that
- Whether it is dangerous, and to whom — this is what moves a report up a queue
- Your name and a phone number they can call back on
- The date
Keep a copy of everything you send. You will need it if you escalate.
Photograph the pole number
Street light poles and ECG poles carry identifying numbers. If you can read one, put it in the report. It removes every remaining ambiguity about which asset you mean.
Where to send it
Your district assembly is the first stop for most of the table above. Every assembly has a client service or public relations unit, a physical office, and increasingly a Facebook or X account that is monitored more closely than the email address. Use more than one channel.
Your assembly member is the route almost nobody uses and the one that most often works. Each electoral area elects an assembly member to sit on the district assembly, and they are meant to carry exactly this kind of complaint into it. They are local, findable, and answerable to a few thousand people rather than a few million. Ask a neighbour who yours is. Unit committee members serve the same function below that level.
ECG takes fault reports through the ECG Power App, its call centre and its district offices. The call centre number is printed on your bill and on the ECG website; use the current one rather than a number somebody posted three years ago.
Ghana Water Company takes reports of burst mains, leaks and supply failures through its call centre and district offices. — Water in Accra
The Motor Traffic and Transport Department of the police handles hazards on the road that need immediate attention — a collapsed sign, an open manhole in a live lane, debris after a crash.
When it is dangerous, do not file a report
Some things are not a complaint. They are an emergency, and the difference is whether somebody could be killed before the report is read.
Call 112 for any emergency, or:
| Situation | Call |
|---|---|
| Fire, or a burning pole or transformer | 192 |
| Injury, electrocution, someone in a drain | 193 |
| A live wire down, a hazard in traffic | 191 |
A fallen power line is live until ECG says it is not. Keep people away from it, keep children and animals away from standing water near it, and call.
Street lights
Street lighting is the complaint Accra makes most and reports least, partly because of a widespread belief that nobody is responsible for it.
Somebody is. The lamps belong to the district assembly, which is why the assembly is who to tell. The money is partly yours: a street lighting levy is charged on electricity bills, which is a reasonable thing to mention in a written complaint.
What to send: the GhanaPostGPS address, the pole number if it is legible, how many consecutive lamps are out, and how long. A run of six dead lamps on a road people walk at night is a different report from one dead lamp, and should be written as one.
Potholes and road damage
Work out whose road it is from the table above before writing. If you are not sure, send it to the assembly and say you are not sure whose road it is — they will know, and it is a fair question rather than an excuse to do nothing.
Include:
- How wide and deep, roughly. A pothole a motorcycle can disappear into is worth saying so
- Whether it is in a lane traffic actually uses, or at the edge
- Whether it has already caused a crash or a burst tyre that you know of
- Whether it floods
After the rains is when to report
Accra’s roads fail in the rainy season and the damage compounds fast. A hole reported in June is a hole; the same hole in September is a trench. — Weather and seasons
Drains, flooding and the thing under the slab
Blocked drains are an assembly matter, and in Accra they are also a matter of life and death: the floods that kill people here are the ordinary drains, not the rivers.
Report a blocked drain, a missing or broken slab, a drain somebody has built over, and any structure standing in a watercourse. The last of those is a physical planning complaint as much as an engineering one, and it is worth sending in writing so that it exists on a file.
A missing drain cover on a pavement is an emergency in the dark. Report it, and put something visible over it in the meantime.
Billboards and outdoor advertising
Billboards are regulated by district assemblies through their outdoor advertising units, which issue permits and collect fees.
Worth reporting:
- A billboard leaning, rusted at the base, or with a torn face flapping loose
- One erected without a permit, or in a road reserve
- One that blocks sightlines at a junction, which is a road safety matter as well as a planning one
- An abandoned frame nobody maintains
- One on a pedestrian route where the structure obstructs the pavement
A billboard collapse in a storm is exactly the kind of accident that turns out to have been reported by nobody. It is also the category where an assembly has a direct financial interest in acting, because an unpermitted structure is uncollected revenue.
If nothing happens
Assume the first report will not be acted on. That is not cynicism, it is planning: build the follow-up into how you report in the first place.
- Report in writing and keep the reference. A phone call leaves no record and creates no obligation.
- Follow up after two weeks, referring to the original date and reference.
- Escalate within the assembly — from the client service unit to the coordinating director, in writing.
- Go to your assembly member, and ask them to raise it.
- Go to the sector regulator. For water and electricity that is PURC, which exists to hear consumer complaints and is badly under-used.
- Go to CHRAJ. The Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice takes complaints about public bodies that have failed to do their job. It is free.
- Go to the Regional Coordinating Council, which oversees the assemblies in Greater Accra.
- Make it public. Radio phone-ins and a photograph on social media that tags the assembly move things that letters do not. Keep it factual: the location, the date you reported it, the reference, and the fact that nothing has been done.
— Who to complain to about what
What actually works
- Being specific. A digital address and a photograph beat a paragraph of frustration every time.
- Being repetitive. The same report, politely, on a schedule, from a person who clearly is not going away.
- Being several people. Six neighbours reporting one dark street is a different thing from one person reporting it six times. A residents’ association letter carries more weight than any individual one.
- Naming the risk. “A child walks this road to school in the dark” is not emotional padding; it is the fact that decides priority.
- Going through your assembly member, who has a reason to care about your electoral area specifically.
Do not pay anyone to fix public infrastructure
You may be approached by someone offering to make the problem go away for a fee, or asking for “fuel money” to bring a crew. Paying is how a public service becomes a private one that only some streets can afford, and you have no recourse when the work is bad. Report it instead. — Government agencies
Before you report, check it is not you
Two false alarms are common enough to be worth ruling out first.
No water may be a supply interruption affecting the whole area rather than a fault at your property. Ask a neighbour before reporting a burst main. — Water in Accra
No power may be dumsor, a load-shedding schedule, or your own prepaid meter having run out at an inconvenient hour. — Electricity and dumsor
Find your district assembly Ghana’s regulators Emergency numbers